REMEMBER THAT TIME WE LIVED IN PAPUA NEW GUINEA?

Throughout the last two years there have been quite a few occasions when Paul and I have been baffled that we live in the third world. Sometimes, we would just stare out our bedroom window, or stand just outside and look out onto the developed portion of the undeveloped world: a rolling hillside the color of Tennessee dirt, more copper colored than brown, speckled with hints of green only during the rainy season; two parallel runways at the small airport that seemed close enough to touch; two roads, also parallel, one leading to the Airways Hotel and to the developing landscape beyond, the other providing access to the airport and all of the businesses that support the local aviation industry; planes, lots of planes. O.K., in reality there were probably a dozen and a half planes at most but still, planes.

Planes that would wake us at 5 a.m. when three consecutive overnight flights landed within half an hour of each other, thrust reversers broadcasting their arrival in an otherwise tranquil early morning. Planes that would start their engines with high-pitched squeals and booming whooshes any time Paul and I would attempt to sleep, whether napping in the afternoon or lying down for an evening sleep. Planes. Because we lived in a place where there was an airport in our front yard.

Sometimes I would watch vehicles make their way along the hillside roads on the other side of the runways. Little miniature cars, mostly white, just pushing along as if a child were providing the energy needed to move the trucks from one side to the other.

Once we saw fire in the evening sky. PNG’s land is fertile when it comes to natural resources; copper, gold and natural gas are just three of the major exports. Exxon Mobil last year completed a liquefied natural gas line just north of Port Moresby and, when the pipeline was ready for production, the initial gas expelled was burned and the whole eastern sky looked as if the clouds were burning the black out of the night.

Paul and I spent most of our days in our two-room apartment. Mostly because there wasn’t a whole lot to do in Port Moresby and mostly because my husband was leery to see what else Port Moresby had to offer – you know, safety and personal security wise. He was always content inside where he had the comforts of cable television, unlimited, though often slow, Wi-Fi and air conditioning.

A local café and clothing boutique called Duffy and the compound next door, The Airways, were the only two places Paul would ever let me visit unaccompanied. Only twice was I able to go all the way into town for a grocery run without him chaperoning me. “I would really prefer that you wait until I am home to go,” he would say if he were out on a trip.

I made friends in PNG, though a little too late. Desi, one of Paul’s flight attendants, is a wonderful woman of God with a heart bigger than the Grinch’s new one. Her 2-year-old daughter has immense, cautious eyes – she examines every situation and thinks carefully before responding. Paul and I were the first and likely the only Caucasian people she met.

Brenda is Paul’s boss’s wife. She speaks the most beautiful prayers I have ever heard.

As Paul and I left PNG today, I was sad to leave them, and I was sad that I had not become friends with them sooner. I think we would have had many happy times together, but I am certainly grateful that I know them now.

Paul and I no longer live in PNG. We left today after an emotional few months. The short version of the story begins with the company issuing a new contract to all the pilots, an inferior contract that included pay cuts and decreased benefits, making it nearly impossible for some of the pilots to continue their employment. Paul, like many pilots, chose to not sign the new agreement and, while everyone around the world spent 24 consecutive hours counting down the seconds to the conclusion of one minute, one hour, one day, one month, all signifying the end of one year, Paul and I were watching the clock, counting down to the 5 p.m. deadline that would determine whether or not he would have a job come midnight.

Three pilots operated Paul’s plane. Though he technically worked for a commercial airline operation, he was responsible for flying government officials on an airline-managed corporate jet. The commercial pilot agreement only partially applied to the pilots on the corporate jet and, since only three people out of more than 200 are trained to fly the aircraft, Paul felt he had a bit of leverage. On the evening of December 31, the deadline for the pilots to either sign or resign, Paul stated his intention to continue with the company under better terms, otherwise he was happy to leave. Paul was advised that his contract would be extended two days so that company management could review his proposal to continue his employment.

Instead of having a firm decision, the next several days only extended the drama and the uncertainty. On January 2, Paul was told that if he did not sign the contract prior to the end of the day, he was no longer employed. He accepted the notion that he was no longer employed. On January 4, he received a call to fly the plane because yes, the company said, he was still employed. On January 6, Paul was told that he had three options: resign and work two more months to conclude his existing contract, terminate his employment and sacrifice a lot of money or sign the 2015 contract to remain employed. Terms changed, an attorney was consulted and, finally, on January 9, Paul came home and announced that he was unemployed. We were done. We were leaving the country in four days.

Paul and I spent Sunday inspecting every nook and cranny in our apartment, throwing away things we would no longer need or would absolutely not use. We decided to spend a few days in Hong Kong while making our journey back to the U.S., so we sorted our belongings into a Hong Kong suitcase each, placing the rest of our needed items into two large suitcases. Anything not in the suitcases would be packed by the moving company representatives and shipped home.

Monday morning the movers came and had everything packed in under 30 minutes. We filled three boxes with food and kitchen supplies and gave them to Desi to share with her friends and family members. We sold our car last night.

The last week has been a combination of a whirlwind and a great pause. Yes, our departure has moved quickly, but the process to get to that conclusion has taken months. Like many days the last two months, we the last week spent a lot of time waiting and debating. So much of this process was out of my hands. With nothing to do, I spent hours pondering – life, what else to clean, what else to pack or organize, how soon I should shower if our flight doesn’t leave for seven hours.

After a lunchtime good-bye with friends and more waiting in the airport, Paul and I finally boarded our plane. After waiting on paperwork and the ever-so-slow taxi to the main runway, Paul and I held hands and said our final goodbyes to PNG while praying for a safe journey. As the wheels started turning, tears unexpectedly filled my eyes. I looked out the window to my right as the world started to pass by and I felt a tear run down my right cheek, then another. I carefully hid my face from Paul who was two seats to my left, looking out the window on that side, for fear that he would mistake my tears for sadness.

When the tires were off the pavement and we were airborne, Paul and I squeezed our hands and glanced at each other with hopeful smiles. He made a comment about my tears. “Sad?” Paul inquired. I shook my head. “This is pure relief,” I explained. And it was. I finally felt relief. It’s done. It’s all done. The work drama, the changing plans, the which-one-do-we-choose scenarios, the what-are-we-going-to-do quandaries, the when-are-we-leaving, what-are-we-taking-with-us, are-we-actually-doing-this predicaments done. I finally breathed. For me. For us. That moment in Argo when everyone on the plane enters into international air space and at once becomes free – that was my moment.

I stopped crying. And then in my mind I saw Brenda’s face and Desi’s face and I cried a little more, this time out of sadness for the friends that I will dearly miss.

Paul and I have often joked about saying the words that we can now officially say: Hey, remember that time when we lived in Papua New Guinea?

THE GREATEST WALL

PROOF! We were THERE!

When Paul and I first learned that we were going to China, I immediately became excited about the possibility of seeing the Great Wall. I did not know whether we would be able to get to the Wall from Beijing, but I knew I wanted to see it, touch it, stand on it.

Since nothing in our PNG world turns out the way we expect, plans always change and trips are often cancelled, I honestly refused to believe that I would set foot in China until the day that I boarded my flight to Beijing. My brain considered the trip nonexistent until I was on my way, nose up and landing gear secured in the plane’s belly; my emotions were steady even the day before my scheduled flight. “Are you excited about your trip tomorrow,” many people inquired. “I am not convinced I am going,” I replied every time. As such, I was uninterested in researching attractions, determining which historical sites we needed to see or scouring any travel websites to discover all the city had to offer. For the first time, I was completely apathetic toward a vacation. 

Neither of us had much of a plan for our 2.5 days in the city but we were able to determine a handful of locations that we would be able to conquer in a timely manner. We had time to have cab drivers chauffeur us around the city and asked the hotel concierges to recommend popular destinations. We walked around parks, gazed at monuments and learned about China's history in the process. But the sole thing that I wanted to do while we were in the area was to get up close and personal with the Wall.

Though Paul and I have had many amazing, fabulous opportunities and have traveled across the globe to places that most of our friends and our family members will likely never see, I do not believe that I had experienced many once-in-a-lifetime moments until faced with the possibility of visiting China’s Great Wall. I have had moments in my life when I knew that I needed to do something while the opportunity was in front of me – like move to Singapore – but this moment – touching history older than my country, imagining what the world was like at the time and the battles that were fought along the seemingly endless pathway – was something I just knew that I had to do, and I was dragging my husband along with me because, whether he liked it or not, I was going to make this his once-in-a-lifetime moment as well. I think my time floating in the Dead Sea was the only other OIALM to that date.

From Beijing, we had our pick of several locations but, after quite a bit of research, we determined that the easiest location for transportation options would be the tourist mecca called Badaling. We had planned to take a train up to the point but that morning turned out to be one of those days when absolutely nothing went to plan. That afternoon Paul, with the help of bilingual hotel staff, arranged for a hired driver to take us the hour-plus trip to the Badaling entrance, and our driver’s bilingual friend on the phone helped Paul also secure a ride home.

Driving out of the city and into China’s countryside was a beautiful experience. As we drove farther north, the terrain intensified as buildings ceased and mountains extended toward the heavens, a strong, bold allusion to the Great Wall itself.

I experienced my OIAL breathtaking moment when I first caught a glimpse of the Wall, high on a mountainside. I actually gasped as my jaw dropped open and I savored the moment before scrambling for my camera.

One of my first pictures of the Great Wall outside Beijing

As we drove along, I was in awe of the structure and the history before me. The Wall was part of the mountain range, ebbing and flowing with each peak and valley, a juxtaposition of mighty, unwavering strength and graceful movement that seemingly streamed into eternity.

Paul was most looking forward to a gondola ride that would take us up the mountain so that we would not have to climb thousands of stairs. As we made our way to the building, we noticed the lack of people in the vicinity. A very large sign through the glass doors confirmed my suspicion: the cable cars were closed.

Badaling had all the signs of a popular tourist location: lines of junk shops, hagglers and signs boasting Wi-Fi availability. Yes, even the Great Wall of China has Wi-Fi.

I had read that November was the best month to visit the wall so I was eager to see a continuation of the bright amber leaves I had witnessed in the city. Once we climbed a few sets of stares and gazed out across God’s vast creation, all we saw were branches – naked branches along a russet landscape only highlighted by a few evergreen clusters that more often resembles moss than trees. The only pops of color that brightened the background were the many coats worn by visitors making their way up and down the ridges.

I noticed the majority of tourists heading one direction, so I decided that Paul and I would hit the trail in the opposite direction to avoid the crowds.

The wind was fierce at times, biting our hands and faces in the cold near-winter air. We braved the cold and again climbed higher and higher as I constantly insisted that I would scale only one more peak, lying every time.

The first of many stairways toward heaven. Not even close to the top.

I was breathless, partly because climbing steep, uneven stairs in frigid temperatures will take the breath out of a person, but mostly because standing upon the structure, living the realization that the stones on which my feet were planted had been secured to the earth nearly 3,000 years before my existence. The first part of the Great Wall was said to be constructed in the 7^th Century B.C. Construction continued for more than 2,000 years.

Many areas of the Great Wall have been restored; Badaling is the most preserved section and the first area open to tourists, which is why the location is so popular. I was aware of just how many people had visited the site over the years because the only thing as prevalent as the stones themselves were the signatures etched into each block.

People from all over the world marked their names into the wall, some with permanent marker, others etched in the stone

The wall has a width that was said to be large enough for 10 soldiers or five horses to pass side by side. I have absolutely no idea how the horses would have been able to conquer the stairs from either direction. We ascended hundreds of stairs in varied condition: some held steady while others were loose under our shoes; a few spots revealed crevasses and dilapidation.

Stair height, depth and gradient levels were completely inconsistent. One stair would be nearly twice the size of my foot, requiring a little gumption to get me going, and then several smaller stairs only 2 inches high would continue.

I thought climbing up the steep slopes was difficult, but descending proved to be a bit tougher, at least for me. I grasped onto the metal pole with both bare hands, sometimes wrapping my arm around the guard rail as I took one determined step at a time. Paul found a more enjoyable escape technique.

Yes, he actually slid down the pole a few different times, a couple from a more verticle position.

Because we only witnessed a small portion of the vast structure, we did have a bit of, “OK, we have seen enough,” and, “It’s starting to all look the same from here,” attitude. However, we absolutely took several moments to pause, gaze and consider where we were and who had come before us. 

An area of a tower where fires would be lit to signal invaders. The fires and smoke signals identified the number of soldiers approaching.

Please do not steal my photos.

BEIJING

Beijing, China, was the first city in which I felt incredibly inept. Since living in Singapore I have often joked about being a stupid American for a variety of reasons – spouting uneducated phrases, not knowing paramount world history, embarrassed by my ability to fluently speak only American English – but standing in China, even for four days, made me abundantly aware of just how little I knew.

I thought of Beijing as an international city flooded with global businesses and people from every major market – like New York City. Beijing has old parts, new parts and beyond ancient parts – some buildings we encountered on a morning amble had plaques denoting historic sites from the 15- and 1600s. Like Singapore, the city seemed to abound with greenery and had a strong appreciation for parks, which were never sparsely populated.

We had to pay to get from place to place, though taxi rides were incredibly inexpensive, and we had to pay to enter each park, usually paying additional fees to see specific areas within each park. If you make plans to visit Beijing, be sure to have four things: a mask for any unbearable pollution, an ample supply of yuan (currency), an Uber app on your mobile phone and a Mandarin translation app. Do not leave home without some form of translation assistance!

Paul has done more traveling than I and even he was taken aback by our inability to effectively communicate with an average person within the city. Our “Nín hǎo” (hello) and “Xièxiè” (thank you) only got us so far.

Most people in the city did not speak English, and by that I mean they did not know a single English word. Consequently, we quickly learned that a common taxi would not always be our best option. Our hotel was in the heart of the city – a fantastic location – but the hotel had only opened three months prior, which made our taxi rides quite difficult. Because the building was so new, many drivers were unfamiliar with the address. The hotel did provide business cards with the address and a crafted map; however, the map was fallible. The JW’s griffin logo was displayed on the sketched map but no correlation between the clip art image and the hotel chain was present, leaving drivers highly confused. One irate driver was so overwhelmed that we had to call the hotel reception desk and have someone verbally provide directions so that we could get back. We could not help the man; we could not understand the man; he could not understand us; no one else in the taxi zone knew how to get where we needed to go. No one around us spoke or understood English so we felt completely helpless. And lost. And stupid.

Thank God for Uber, our international taxi and private car phone app, which allowed us to solicit registered vehicles and input our desired locations, providing the drivers with GPS directions throughout the route. With the help of a tourist destination location card and our Google Translate app, we were able to navigate around most of Beijing, but the Uber services truly made our transportation experiences much less stressful.

I would also like to mention that the staff at the JW Marriott Central were incredibly accommodating – they offered to have a young bilingual member of the concierge staff accompany us to a local shopping center where we could purchase sim cards for our mobile phones, allowing us to have cell phone service within China. The process took more than an hour but the young man guided our taxi driver, patiently stood with us, waited for our turn to speak with a representative and then acted as a translator to ensure that Paul acquired what he desired. I have never had that kind of service before.

Paul’s trip was cut short – arrive on day one, spend days two and three in the city and then leave on day four – so we really only had two days to experience one of the world’s greatest historic cities.

We woke the first day, looking out over the city, surprised that we could see out our windows. We had heard horrid, horrid reports of Beijing’s pollution levels, a constant issue for the city due to the nearby factories. Planning ahead, we secured four masks in Singapore, where we were just before we each landed in China.

Ah, but we are blessed and God knew we wanted a great experience.

We arrived in Beijing the week of APEC, the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation, attended by many of the world’s leaders. Because pollution and other pertinent environmental issues were paramount to the week’s agenda, the Chinese leaders three weeks prior to the convention closed the factories and enforced strict vehicle regulations, only allowing a certain number of vehicles on the roads each day; these restrictions lasted throughout the convention.

Not only was the air clear, but it was crisp and cool and even the major news outlets reported on people’s ability to see the clouds above embracing each other and swaying along in the autumn breeze. We had no use for our masks while in the city.

The weather was beautiful and the air quality levels were in the 50s, far, far better than more than 400 reported yesterday. I took in my surroundings watching a small group do tai chi.

We drove up to the Forbidden City’s north gate and were advised that the site was closed, so we walked around a bit before entering Jingshan Park across the road. The park, said to be one of the best preserved imperial gardens, is 1,000 years old and features tens of thousands of peonies.

Forbidden City North Gate

Jingshan Park

Excited for an actual cultural excursion, I started sprinting up steps, leaving Paul in my dust. I kept climbing winding ancient stone stairs, up a hillside until I came to a tower. When I saw more stairs leading to a higher point, I skipped along to the next interval. Again and again I climbed and my poor husband shrugged along behind me.

When we climbed the apex, we were able to see what was inside the Forbidden City’s walls.

View of the Forbidden City

The tallest point at Jingshan Park

We did not get to explore the Forbidden City like we wanted, but we did walk around the city’s walls, and the amber leaves reflecting against the moat, the gardens and vast structures surrounding the city were some of the most spectacular sites I have experienced. The two days we walked around the city were perfect autumn days. 

We later found ourselves in Tiantan Park where the 15^th Century Temple of Heaven was located. Upon entering the park, we were greeted with sounds of instruments playing and voices singing; a group of women were learning a dance off in the distance.

Temple of Heaven in the background

Emperors came to the temple to pray for good harvest each year, but I did not know this until after Paul and I visited. We just entered the park and followed the crowds to the various points of interest highlighted on our map. We followed the people toward the buildings and made jokes about how we were going to photograph the things that every other Asian person was photographing so that we would know what was significant enough to later research.

When I reached the spot closest to the door for the Temple of Heaven, I tried my hardest to peer into the dark silo that appeared to have elegant furniture and a grand, painted interior. I heard a familiar American English accent to my left and saw a man standing next to me. “What exactly are we looking at?” I asked. To my relief, the man replied, “I have no idea. But he does,” and introduced his son, a young boy who started talking about offerings for harvest. “Good to know,” I said as I made my way back to my husband.

Paul and I attempted to find the tower’s smaller replica but after consulting our maps, often found ourselves somewhere other than where we thought we were. We made it to the Echo Wall just in time for the park’s closing and again followed the crowds out to the street.

Enjoy more photos! Please look but do not steal my photos.

I don't know whether it was because of APEC or because we were in China, but there were armed guards EVERYWHERE. I have never seen so many military police, civilian police and security guards in one city. We saw them walking, biking and driving along every part of the city.

One man suckered us into visiting his art studio; he then painted Paul's name

Part of an old neighborhood along the forbidden city

Marble platform leading up to the Temple of Heaven

Amazing art on the buildings

Giant door!

One of Tiantan Park's many footpaths